The Lambertville record. [volume] (Lambertville, N.J.) 1872-1968, 1887-06-01

THIS laSt great cOnHlCJ ana OF the example OF
those who could no longer accompany the
triumph of their country.
Flowers were made the offerings upon the
tombs of the dead, as being within the gift
of all and seasonable for the opening forth
of spring. When everything gives proof OF
4 its consistency to life-bud, blossom and
eyergreen-the survivors of the war genera
ton and their children and friends 60 forth
with armfuls of floral offerings to say by
attestation: 1--WE lived By the sacrifice of
these; in their death we are preserved for
gentler living, full opportunities and higher
loyalty and reverence"
The celebration of the warrior lost by
strewing flowers was, like all ceremonials Of
taste and feeling, started by few but its
! fitness was soon appreciated by the multi
tude on both sides of the fierce civil conflict.
The harmless offerings, fresh from natures
lap, assuaged resentment and encouraged
taste. Not even flowers grow without
knowledge and care, so Decoration Day be-
came the birth of the sense of beauty in
many sordid heart and inconsiderate neigh
borhood
Hard men and needless women awakened
to a consciousness of disloyalty to nature and
her consultations of blooms He who could
not tell the name of one flower in the garden
beneath the sunfower and the rose, perhaps
realized as he took his way in the procession
Of the dead what Wordsworth had written
in the previous century:
A primrose on the rivers brim,
A yellow primrose was to him;
And it was nothing more.
Worse than this, the merely instructive
and restless life of many Americans had
banished the name of the primrose from
their limited glossaries. They did not know
the coleus fsom the weed, nor see the mani
fold uses OF taste in the sum of enjoying,
cultiyating and selling.
Thirty years ago American schoolmasters
taught with heather glee the well-known
fact in history that the Dutch once had
tulip mania," and in their financial
exchange ran tulip bulbs and blooms up to
such figures as railroad stocks and foreign
loans might bring. The pupils also grinned
like little practical heathens at the dense
ignorance and folly of these Dutch.
But there was to come day when orchids
and hollyhocks, orange blossoms and petli-
Mas were to sell in the United States at
prices rivaling tulips in the mania of the
so-called ''crazy Dutch" 1t is upon the
tastes and culture of men that the profitable
arts thrive and much of the raiiing against
luxury" and Extravaganza in the first
half of this century was the expression OF
self-satisfied ignorance blaming enjoyments
it could not understand
In certain town not hundred miles
from Washington the son of rich land
holder, seeking to say something which
should recommend him to lady, boosted
that he had never read any book. This
seemed to him to be the distinction of rare
Independence. ut is plain to be SEEM said
the lady, that you dislike women.n
30, no." he answered hastily 81 like
ladies SO much that l have no time to read.p
The same could have been said by your
negro twenty years ago. remarked the in
dignant beauty.
Brusque as the latter may have been she
represented the changes wrought since Deco
ration Day. Bare is the town without its
florist now, and the land has by law set
apart day for planting trees as we'll
The sister of young physician in Ohio,
rambling with him one day in wood, discov-
cred the eggs of bird.
What kind of birds eggs are thesePn she
asked.
81 do not know
mo. There is no such book"
mo such book - exclaimed the high-spir-
tied sister. ''ThenI would write one"
Inthe sequel the brother made book, de-
scriptive of every species Of bird and nest in
Ohio and the sister and her mother engraved
and colored the plates.
Contrast the above with story told of
Lord Ashburton by Vincent Nolte The
former was then Francis Barring, son of a
wealthy London banker, and was counting
his American wife, Miss Bingham, of Phila-
delphia, when his comprehensive spirit
moved him tn drive through the mountains
of Western Virginia to the far West. AT
roadside tavern where he had dined he OBJ
served that his fine new carriage had been
cut and scratched in his absence by the UNI
lettered Migrants who lounged around the
inn.
What savage deed p said young Barring
Indignantly, ito have no other appreciation
of beautiful thing, and the property of a
stranger, than to destroy it or deface it p
One Of the rude savages spoke up, his SEN
sibility of such independence, as he under
Stood being wounded:
1--WE killed man yer not long ago for
talking about we-uns like that r.
40, did your" replied the polite banker,
looking at the man. "And pray, did you
cat him, too?'
Theruffian' sense of self-respect was reused
at last at perceiving that in the eyes of an
educated man he was little better than can
nibal, and he skunk away among his com
panions.
Seventy years ago Nathaniel Macon,
Speaker of Congress, uttered the sentiment
that ''bad roads and fst-6ghting made the
best militia in the world"
Such was the conception of liberty in
state of society little above savage times.
To-day upon the graves of silent soldiery
the education of flowers commences another
era and men need no longer be animals to
appreciate the liberty that respects the lib